With Your Fierce Tears
by Destiny919
Summary: "Stiles," Lydia whispered. "I know you're in there." The nogitsune smiled at her, indulgently, sardonically. Confidently. "You're right, banshee. He's in here. He's hearing everything, seeing everything, feeling everything. He's going to feel it when I rip out your beating heart with his hands."


_And you, my father, there on that sad height,_

_Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray._

_Do not go gentle into that good night._

_Rage, rage against the dying of the light. _

- Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

"Stiles," Lydia whispered. "I know you're in there."

The nogitsune smiled at her, indulgently, sardonically. Confidently. "You're right, banshee. He's in here. He's hearing everything, seeing everything, feeling everything. He's going to feel it when I rip out your beating heart with his hands."

And yet she could almost hear his voice calling for her from deep within the demon. Just a little louder, please. This had been going on for hours, almost all night – they'd finally penned in not-Stiles and managed to keep him there without anyone taking a samurai sword to the gut. They weren't going to stop until they had their boy back.

She made herself look into the eyes she knew so well, the ones rendered flat and cold and unfamiliar. They were always warm when they looked at her, warm and deeper than the Mariana Trench, making her almost incapable of looking away. Lydia needed those eyes back. She had to get them back.

She tried reaching out to him with her mind. _You asked me to come find you. I can do it, you need to help me a little more. You're the one who always figures it out, I said. I really meant – you're the one who saves us. Scott and Isaac and Allison might be the muscle, but you're – you're not the brain. That's me. You're the heart. We need you._ She willed those words to him as hard as possible, drawing on any power granted by their tether, by the love he felt for her for so long, the love she felt for him now, when he was almost gone. _We need you, Stiles. I need you._

"Stiles," she said again. Louder, stronger. Determined. Her hands balled into fists. Once she might have gouged holes in her palms with sharp painted claws, but between the chips and breaks from fighting, and the deplorable stress-induced new habit of chewing on them, she'd abandoned her manicures. Stiles was worth it. She could go have a lovely mani-pedi as soon as she had him back. "Stiles. Listen to me. You know how smart I am. I'm going to win a Nobel Prize, remember? So when I tell you that you're strong enough to win, to come back to us – me, you know I'm right. I need you." The nogitsune, which had been circling Lydia carefully, froze in her peripheral vision.

"If you let the nogitsune – if you're gone – I won't win the Nobel Prize. Because if you die –," her voice lowered to a whisper as she recalled the words said in a frenzy of unrestrained emotion, so alien to her, "I will literally go out of my freakin' mind. So. Please. For me?" She thought of him unwinding red string from around her fingers, telling her how much he believed in her as he did so. And his face after he did. They'd been surrounded by Japanese myths. Why not one more? A red string connecting two fated lovers. Stiles might say the string was strawberry-blonde. The thought made her smile, despite where she was. And before it could slip away, she turned the full force of it on the nogitsune. On Stiles. "You told me not to doubt myself. That you never would. I've never doubted you either, not since I really knew you. I wish," her voice cracked, "I'd really known you sooner. I wish I'd loved you since I was eight. I might have won a Nobel Prize already, then, because I wouldn't have ever felt like I should pretend to be someone I'm not. I lost a lot of time with you." She reached out a hand to him. "Please don't make me lose any more."

Stiles' whole body was shaking and trembling. Lydia could hear – sense, whatever – that faint inner Stiles waxing and waning in strength and – volume. She dared to step a little closer, heard Scott growl a warning. She ignored it. She felt a scream building in her chest. And, she swore to a God she'd never really believed in and barely could now, if it was a scream for him, she would _never_ let it out.

Another step, just a tiny one, towards the quivering, quaking boy before her. "Please," she said one more time, soft and gentle.

Stiles suddenly stood up ramrod straight, and his eyes rolled back into his head. His mouth opened huge, and something black and slithering and somehow _fiery_ flew out of him through it. She couldn't stop a shriek – an ordinary, human noise, not the death knell of the banshee.

Once all the black terror had been expelled, out came a simple housefly.

It fell to the ground, dead.

And right after, Stiles dropped to his knees, and his eyes slid shut. But his chest was heaving, breath still entering and exiting his body. After a few aching moments, his shoulders relaxed and he lifted his head, eyes open.

Open, and warm, and – _Stiles_. Lydia shrieked again, and ran forward, landing on her own knees and sliding the last few inches towards him – she'd have scrapes on her knees from the rough cement floors, but she couldn't care less. "Stiles, Stiles," she gasped. She reached out, clutching at his face. "Is it you, are you okay, are you – ?"

He met her eyes, honey-brown on green. "Fields Medal," he croaked.

"Wh-what?" she replied in a watery voice. Tears were streaming down her face now but she couldn't suppress her smile.

"Fields Medal," he repeated, his voice still hoarse and low. "There's no Nobel Prize for mathematics. You're gonna win a Fields Medal."

_Their sophomore year, the winter formal, he asked her to dance - _

She started sobbing in earnest, and so did Stiles. She flung herself into his arms, wrapping her own around him so tightly if she were a werewolf she would have broken every rib. But she was human, or at least only humanly strong. Just like Stiles, whose human strength of will, human love, had let him defeat a_ demon_. Because of her. That thought might have overwhelmed her.

But then Stiles' arms returned her embrace, and he was holding her like she could slip away at any moment, like she's all he has in the world, and his face was pressed to her neck, his tears mingling with her own, and everything else flew out of her mind.

Scott was there, too, by then. Stiles removed one arm from around Lydia – she missed it immediately, but would never begrudge him this – and latched on to his best friend, who was still fur-faced and glowing-red-eyed. There was a clatter of metal on concrete as Allison dropped her bow and joined what was now swiftly turning into a group pile-on-Stiles hug party, as even Isaac and Derek and Kira converged upon them. Lydia was still right there in the middle of it, though. Right there with Stiles, his head resting on her shoulder even as his forehead was pressed against Scott's.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, when Lydia's knees felt like they had literally become one with the hard floor, Scott moved his head far enough away from Stiles' to ask Kira, "Is the nogitsune really gone? Can you tell?"

The kitsune took a deep breath. "I think so," she said, sounding like a weight had been lifted from her chest – maybe one had, Lydia wasn't clear on the connection between evil fox and good fox. "It's – I feel a lot better, and I – I could feel something, like, not-right, about Stiles, before. I can't anymore. We'll have to have my mom make sure, but. I really think he's cured." She smiled wide.

A collective sigh of relief, Stiles' loudest of all. Lydia could swear hers came in second – okay, tied with Scott. "We need to tell the Sheriff," she said.

"Oh god!" Stiles' head lifted from her shoulder – she missed it right away, and tightened the hand she had fisted in his t-shirt. "My dad. Oh god." He buried his face in his hands.

"Hey. Hey hey hey." Lydia got there first, even as Scott moved with the speed of an alpha wolf. "It's okay, Stiles, it's okay," she soothed, her hands smoothing over Stiles' and gently removing them from his face. She gazed steadily into his agonized eyes – agonized, but very much his own. "He'll just be glad you're okay again," she promised.

"Yeah, right,'" Stiles said darkly. Then he caught her eye again. "I'm sorry, Lyds, but I – I'm not okay. I'm not." He took his hands away from hers and covered his face again.

Scott gripped his best friend's shoulder. "You will be, man. We'll make sure of it. Managed to do this, didn't we?"

"Yeah, I guess." Stiles parted a couple fingers and one eye peeked out at Lydia. He took his hands from his face again entirely. "Thank you, Lydia," he said, his words weighted with something that – she didn't quite like it.

She tossed her hair over her shoulder. "No thanks necessary." She met his stare again. "I mean – okay, yes, thanks necessary. But. Not like that. I'm your tether, Stiles." The last bit came out softly, sweetly. "And you're mine. I meant it when I said I needed you. So it was at least fifty percent a selfish rescue."

"Nothing selfish about you," he told her. "Not anymore."

Lydia made a face at him. "Not you, either." She jabbed his shoulder with one finger. And then couldn't help lunging forward and pressing her lips to his in a fierce kiss. When she pulled away, reluctantly, she spoke in a whisper, words only for him - even if the werewolves could hear her perfectly. "There never was."


End file.
